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Peacock Alley, Soon to Become a Lounge, Serving New Small Plates

<div class="image"><img src="http://nymag.com/images/2/daily/food/07/03/08_peacockalley_sm.jpg"/></div>The lounge-ification of New York continues apace. At the <a href="http://nymag.com/listings/hotel/waldorf-astoria/index.html">Waldorf-Astoria</a>&#8217;s <a href="http://nymag.com/listings/restaurant/peacock-alley/index.html">Peacock Alley</a>, long a citadel of haute cuisine, the lounge will literally swallow up the dining room at the end of the month, and an already-expanded small-plates menu will take the place of the traditional dining and &#224; la carte service. &#8220;We can have bolder flavors,&#8221; John Doherty, the hotel&#8217;s executive chef, tells us, &#8220;because you&#8217;re eating less.&#8221; Allow us to elaborate: In one new dish, chef Cedric Tovar is smoking salmon (in another, sturgeon) with cedar chips and serving them with braised endive and a bright citrus emulsion; in one holdover, he&#8217;s serving jumbo Maya shrimp cocktail with spicy horseradish, tomato marmalade, and tomato sorbet. The new menu will be 90 percent seafood, Tovar says: &#8220;People love the way I work with fish.&#8221;

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The lounge-ification of New York continues apace. At the Waldorf-Astoria’s Peacock Alley, long a citadel of haute cuisine, the lounge will literally swallow up the dining room at the end of the month, and an already-expanded small-plates menu will take the place of the traditional dining and à la carte service. “We can have bolder flavors,” John Doherty, the hotel’s executive chef, tells us, “because you’re eating less.” Allow us to elaborate: In one new dish, chef Cedric Tovar is smoking salmon (in another, sturgeon) with cedar chips and serving them with braised endive and a bright citrus emulsion; in one holdover, he’s serving jumbo Maya shrimp cocktail with spicy horseradish, tomato marmalade, and tomato sorbet. The new menu will be 90 percent seafood, Tovar says: “People love the way I work with fish.”